I would almost guarantee that if you struggle to learn something in a course other than your own, it will change how you teach; and 20 years at the front of the room (maybe less) erases virtually all memories of what it’s like to be seated in a small, uncomfortable desk somewhere in the middle of the room.

Sometimes class discussions are difficult because students are hesitant to participate or because one student tends to dominate. And sometimes—as we’ve heard from faculty in these turbulent times—they’re difficult because emotions are running high and some students may be angry or anxious.

The recent political debacle involving hacking of a certain official’s computer reminds us once again of the ease and dangers of phishing. You may have been even more tempted recently to click on one of those links in an email because the phishers are getting more sophisticated, not to mention better at spelling and grammar.

E-mails that have actual logos, appear to be written in a form that mimics legitimate messages, or even that appear to come from a UVM or well-known address are all increasing in number.

Is it really so bad to click? This one came from a friend of mine so surely it’s OK? And, really, who would be interested in what’s on my computer anyway?

What kinds of things do phishers want to do? Gain access to your contacts so they can send phishing email to everyone on that list that will look that it is sent from a real account. If your friends start asking you why you are sending them fake ads or disturbing images or angry notes you may wish you hadn’t clicked on that phishing link.

Phishers and hackers may also be interested in harvesting your passwords. Many people use the same password for multiple services. A hacker who gets access to one now has a way to gain access to all. Once again, you may not mind if FaceBook posts appear to be from you start popping up but then again when your Amazon account and all the credit card information you stored there gets stolen – not so nice.

And hackers and malware? Well viruses are no fun and can be difficult to get rid of. Even worse is malware that turns your computer into a botnet whereby the hacker can use it to send malware to others.

How can you tell if an e-mail, even one that looks like it comes from a friend, is a phishing scam?

Is it telling you to click the link and provide your login information? Don’t click the link. If it’s your bank or a company that you do business just go to their website yourself and login as usual.

Does it look like it comes from a friend? Don’t click the link. If it is a full address you can copy and paste the link into your browser. Or, if it is a phrase that is a link you can right-click or control-click on it, copy and paste the link and, before hitting enter, look to see if it appears legitimate. For example, if your friend is sending you a link to a YouTube video make sure the address is http://www.youtube.com not http;//www.yuutube.com.

Does it look like official UVM business or like a note from Blackboard? Don’t click the link. UVM will never send email asking for your NetID and password. Any Blackboard alert messages will be posted on the Blackboard login page or sent from our own Blackboard admin with no request to click.

If you are ever uncertain about the legitimacy of an email message concerning your uvm.edu account, please contact the Computing Help Line at 656-2604, or submit a help request online by emailing techteam@uvm.edu.

And if you would like to report phishing, please forward the phishing email with full headers to is-spam@labs.sophos.com and to abuse@uvm.edu. (To forward a message with headers, please see http://www.uvm.edu/techteam/forwarding-full-mail-headers/)

By the way, the latest news reports that the case mentioned at the beginning of this blog post started out even more innocuous. Apparently the official in question checked with his tech supporter about the email and was told it was legitimate. A short time later they both realized that “legitimate” was a typo and the tech advisor meant to type “illegitimate.” (Please don’t tell me Auto-Correct struck again!) So, even if someone tells you it’s OK to click, resist the temptation.

Whether or not we choose to engage students in dialogue about the election results, we should recognize that some students’ emotional responses may interfere with their ability to focus.

This blog post by the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching offers some sage advice and a few simple strategies to process the event before moving on to regular course content.

Most of us can identify with the chagrin students feel when they earn a grade that they’re not happy about. But, as with most of life’s stings, the disappointment comes with a learning opportunity. An exam wrapper (or assignment or project wrapper) can help students understand what happened and what they can do to improve their learning.

A wrapper is a tool, a series of questions on a form that students fill out after they get their exam grade. In short, they’re asked to identify and reflect upon their own actions and behaviors when studying. This process helps to develop metacognition or meta learning; students increase their understanding of themselves as learners and see the correlation between their successes or their less-than-ideal grades to their personal actions and behaviors.

Some faculty follow up with a class discussion or they request that students visit them individually during office hours to talk about what they wrote. Sometimes the wrappers are returned to students prior to the next exam, in time for them to reflect again and take steps to adjust their actions.

The scales have been tipped a little here at the CTL Doctor Is In program. Typically, at the beginning of a semester, the majority of our visits from faculty are about some aspect of using Blackboard, but for the first time, Blackboard was beaten out by iClickers in frequency.

One reason for this uptick is the increasing awareness of iClickers as a means to engage students in class, to support classroom discussions, to give short quizzes, and to keep track of attendance. Another is that faculty like that they can now choose to allow students to use their mobile phones. (Optional!)

As with just about all software, alas, there are a few “gotchas”—that is, pesky problems whose solutions are usually simple but frustratingly elusive.

CTL staff member, Henrie Paz-Amor, has kindly put together this list of things to keep in mind while doing the following iClicker tasks:

Syncing the Course Roster in iClicker from Blackboard

Choose the CORRECT course from the list. This image shows the anatomy of those critical numbers before your course name. Read more on this page.

Connecting to the Base Station

There are usually two choices for connecting to the iClicker base station in the classroom. If you are using the classroom computer at the podium, make sure that cable is plugged into the base station. However, if you’re using your laptop, double check that you’ve got the right cable plugged into it. It can be easy to miss. » See image

Powerpoint Slides are not Advancing

If you’ve clicked on the iClicker program to begin a poll, you have to click back on Powerpoint in order to make the next slide advance.

Another Powerpoint/iClicker Consideration

When you’re using both Powerpoint and iClicker you have to set your display to “Mirroring” [on a Mac] or “Duplicate Display” [on Windows].

Saving the Polling Data

When you’re done running a poll, you must make sure to close it properly or the data will not be collected. Click the red button to stop your poll BEFORE clicking the small “x” to close the polling window.

Using the iClicker Remote

Faculty iClickers (the blue ones) can act as a remote for advancing your slides, however the iClicker’s ID must be first be entered into the iClicker app.

Click on iClicker settings and choose General. Enter the 8-digit code on the back of the iClicker into the Instructor Remote ID box.

The following blog post from the University of Michigan invites us to thoughtfully consider the teaching challenges and opportunities afforded by this often hostile election season. It asks that faculty from all disciplines encourage students to think critically and hold civil discourse about the many fraught topics in the campaigns both before and after the election this November.

Even if you have extensive teaching experience, the first day of class can create some nervous jitters. So, we’ve collected a few suggestions, tips, and resources here that will help your class get off to a good start.

One of the most frequent recommendations we hear from faculty is to arrive at the room both early and well-prepared. If you’re using classroom technology, have it connected before the students arrive. (If possible, visit the classroom the day before, to make sure you know how to do that.)

Susanmarie Harrington (UVM, English) says that conveying your own excitement about the topic of the course can make all the difference. “You only have one chance to make a good first impression, and the best way to help your students feel excited about your class is by being enthusiastic about it yourself.” While it’s common to spend time on preliminaries like going over the syllabus, try to leave time to dive into teaching. This lets your students know that you intend to make every class worthwhile and they leave feeling that they’ve already begun learning.

As mentioned above, if you like to review the syllabus here are a couple of ideas to make this more meaningful.

Before the first class meeting, revisit and contemplate your learning objectives and your schedule and identify the overarching themes. When you review the syllabus on the first day, share this 10,000-foot view with your students and talk about how the key themes are woven throughout the schedule. This overview provides not only a conceptual map of the course, but a rationale for the work you will be asking them to do.

Icebreakers: If you don’t have much time, simply ask students to turn to their neighbors and introduce themselves, but if more involved icebreakers appeal to you, here are 37 Icebreaker Activities from the Center for Teaching & Learning, Lansing Community College.

The following activity can help students understand how their own behaviors contribute to a meaningful class experience. From The Teaching Professor Blog by Maryellen Weimer, PhD:

Best and Worst Classes – I love this quick and easy activity. On one section of the blackboard I write: “The best class I’ve ever had” and underneath it “What the teacher did” and below that “What the students did.” On another section I write “The worst class I’ve ever had” (well, actually I write, “The class from hell”) and then the same two items beneath. I ask students to share their experiences, without naming the course, department or teacher, and I begin filling in the grid based on what they call out. If there’s a lull or not many comments about what the students did in these classes, I add some descriptors based on my experience with some of my best and worst classes. In 10 minutes or less, two very different class portraits emerge. I move to the best class section of the board and tell students that this is the class I want to teach, but I can’t do it alone. Together we have the power to make this one of those “best class” experiences.

If group work is emphasized in your course, an icebreaker similar to the one above may be valuable for preventing some of the common problems that students have when working in groups. Ask students to form casual groups of 4–6 with one person designated as the recorder. Give each group a sheet with 2 columns titled:

“Group behaviors that are helpful” and
“Group behaviors that are not helpful”

Have them spend 10 minutes discussing this and listing their ideas in each column. Spend another 15 minutes or so sharing these lists with the whole class.

This course, titled “How to Use Lynda.com,” is great for learning how to search and navigate the site. (Helpful Tip: Clicking on text in a video’s transcript allows you to skip to that part of the video.)

This post is contributed by Dr. Ellen McShane, Director of Academic Success Programs at UVM

On December 11, 2015, I posted a discussion of peer-to-peer collaborative learning experiences implemented through Academic Success Programs (ASP) at UVM. I promised to share the outcomes of our work, which are below:

The College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS) provided ASP with the impact on Grade Point Averages (GPA) for first-year CNHS students in 2015 who were offered peer-tutor-led study groups. Table One below shows that the peer-tutor-led study group project impacted the number of students who earned a 3.5 GPA or higher.

Table One: Outcomes of CNHS Peer-Tutor-Led Study Group Project

Year

Number of Participants

% of FTFY with 3.5 GPA or Higher

2013

0

29.8%

2014

183

31.4%

2015

246

46.6%

In addition, we discovered that our 4-year graduation rate for UVM’s Class of 2015 who received tutoring in their first year at UVM graduated at higher rate than the rest of the class as illustrated in Table Two.

Table Two: Comparison of 4-Yr Grad Rates for Students Tutored in the First Year & all FTFY

Entered 2011

Numbers

4-Year Grad Rate

Tutored

643

68%

All FTFY

2,423

62%

For the returning sophomores in 2015 who had tutoring in their first year, we are pleased to add Table Three to demonstrate the power of peer-to peer collaborative learning.

Table Three: Comparison of 2nd Yr Retention Rates for Students Tutored in the First Year & all FTFY

Entered 2014

Numbers

2nd Yr Retention Rate

Tutored

1,203

89.3%

All FTFY

2,310

85.9%

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